Bibliography

F. Seitz, Physics of Metals, McGraw-Hill Book Company, N. Y.—London, 1943, 330 pp.

F. Seitz, Physics of Metals, 1943, 330 pp.

Seitz’s book is a presentation of lectures delivered by the author at the Pennsylvania University and the Carnegie Institute before an audience composed of physicists and metallurgists. Therefore, metallurgists are given elements of physics, and physicists—elements of metallurgy. As is necessary in such cases, the author can teach how this should be done. The content of the book is quite broad. Despite its small size, it contains 21 chapters, which provide information on atomic physics, the structure of crystals, thermodynamic alloys, the mechanical properties of metals, diffusion, and so on. The last third of the book is devoted to the electron theory of metals and to questions concerning the relation between electrical and magnetic properties.

Despite its cursory and, of necessity, somewhat superficial exposition, the book will be read with great interest not only by those encountering the subject for the first time, but also by specialists, since the author, with great skill, was able to present in a simple form the most essential results achieved in the field bordering physics and metallurgy. Especially good are Chapters XV–XXI, where the conclusions of the modern quantum theory of the metal are presented, chiefly its “band” variant, and qualitative explanations are given of the physical properties of metals and alloys. F. Seitz is known as a theoretical physicist who has most successfully applied mathematical theory to questions of the metallic state (see Seitz’s book The Modern Theory of Solids, 1941). In this book under review, he has succeeded, in an elegant and simple form, as a master of his craft, in conveying the principal results of theoretical research and in bringing them to the circle of metallurgist readers for whom, in the final analysis, the work of physicists in the field of the theory of the metal must be intended.

S. Konobeevskii